I shook my head. “We’re trying to get in touch with all the tenants, see if anyone saw anything suspicious.”
“Only suspicious thing I ever saw was how nice the gardener keep the grass,” he said. “Like somebody pay him extra. All the time guys working out there, trimming hedges, cutting grass. Waste of time.”
We thanked him, and he grumbled about having to find a new location for his dojo, which had just started to become profitable. He’d only had liability insurance because of the expense, so he was worried he’d have to take a job somewhere else in order to build up his savings.
So far, none of the tenants had shown a motive for arson. The cell phone store and the pharmacy were both chains; the fire was an interruption in business. Yuko Mori would suffer financially, so he had no motive either. Ray had talked to a guy from the mainland company that owned the center. They were in the process of hiring a new manager for their island properties, and he knew little about it more than its numbers. He confirmed it had been profitable and said the company had no idea what it was going to do with the burnt-out buildings and the land.
The acupuncture clinic was looking more and more suspicious. Could it be a front for a gambling operation? I went over to see Ricky Koele, a guy I knew who worked at the Business Registration Division, a state agency that’s a division of the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. They maintain the business registry for all corporations and other businesses in the state.
Ricky had been two years behind me at Punahou, the private school Harry, Terri, and I had attended, and we’d known each other through a couple of extracurricular activities. He had come to me a year before when his drug-dealing brother had been killed in a drive-by shooting in Wahiawa, one of the more dangerous parts of the island. Ricky was concerned because he’d overheard one of the investigating officers refer to the crime as NHI-no human involved.
Though Wahiawa was outside of my district, I’d reached out to a detective I knew there, Al Kawamoto, and he’d made sure that Ricky’s brother’s killer was brought in.
“That’s the Professional and Vocational Licensing Division,” Ricky said, when I met him at his desk and asked him about acupuncture. “There are twenty-five professional boards and commissions and twenty licensing programs. You’re looking for the Board of Acupuncture.”
“Can you tell me whose license is behind the Golden Needles Clinic?” I gave him the address on Waialae Avenue and he turned to his computer. It took him a couple of minutes, hitting keys and browsing screens. I listened to Lite 94.7 playing anonymous slack key guitar music over the office sound system while I waited.
“The clinic is run under the license of Dr. Hsing-Wah Hsiao,” Ricky said eventually. “Reason why it took so long, I looked up Dr. Hsiao. Turns out he licensed three other clinics as well-all of them since shut down. I’m printing you a list of all the clinics under his license. Looks like he’s a signologist.”
“What’s that? Some kind of specialist?”
Across from his desk I saw a printer kick into action. Ricky walked over to it and pulled the pages off. “When a doctor signs off on a lot of different licenses, we get the idea maybe he’s nothing more than a guy who likes to sign stuff for money. A signologist.”
He handed the pages to me. “Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate your help.”
“I owe you, Kimo. Come to me any time.”
I stuck my hand out to shake his, but he pulled me into a hug.
On my way back to the station, I thought about why someone would burn the center. To cover up a gambling operation? But they’d already shut down. Could the boy have worked for them, perhaps as a runner? Hang Sung had been hiding something about the acupuncture clinic, but I didn’t know what.
Could the fire have been a ploy to break a lease? The clinic’s two-year lease still had six months to run, and the penalty for breaking it was stiff-the clinic had to cover the rent until the landlord could find another tenant at comparable rent, or until the end of the term. Was that a good clause for that mainland company-or a deadly one for the rest of the tenants, and the boy Jingtao?
ARSON PAYS WELL
Back at my desk, I faxed Ricky’s list to Mike, to see if any of the other clinics licensed by Dr. Hsiao had been burned. Ray said, “I nosed around while you were out. Organized Crime has a task force investigating gambling in Chinatown.” He handed me a list of the guys on the task force. “You want to call Akoni?”
Akoni Hapa’ele had been my old partner in Waikiki. I didn’t see him much anymore, though we were both working out of downtown; he had been moving around from operation to operation. As soon as I left Akoni a voice mail, our next interviewee arrived: Robertico Robles, or Uncle Tico, as my nieces and nephews called him. He managed to fit us in between scouting spots for his new salon, which he announced was going to be bigger and better than Puerto Peinado-which as far as I could tell meant “hair port” in Spanish, a sly pun that he and Tatiana loved.
We went into a small conference room decorated with artwork prepared by our Police Explorer troop-pictures of cops and palm trees and one of a hula dancer on the hood of a blue-and-white. Tico accepted a Styrofoam cup of coffee. “Thanks, I need the caffeine,” he said.
Despite his natural ebullience, I could tell he was troubled. “I feel so terrible for that boy. I shouldn’t have let him stay in the back room. I should have done what you told me, Kimo, and called social services. Either that, or taken him home with me.”
Since I knew Tico so well, we’d decided Ray would take the lead on questions. “You see anyone suspicious hanging around the shopping center?” he asked.
“Suspicious how? A guy with a gasoline can? Honey, I cut hair. All day long. I flirt with the ladies, I listen to them complain about their husbands, I try to steer them away from bad hair choices. I don’t get to lounge around outside looking for suspicious characters.”
“Tell me about the center. The new owners keep it up well? You ever get a sense that they’re letting it run down?”
“They used to have a local manager, but he quit and they haven’t replaced him yet.” Tico took another sip of the bad coffee. “As soon as a store closes, another is ready to take its place.”
“Anyone have a gripe against you, or any of the other businesses?”
He shook his head. “Not that I know. Most of our clientele is local, little old ladies and businesswomen from St. Louis Heights. I try to make them all happy.”
“What about the boy? You told my partner that you thought he was scared of something. You get any idea what that was?”
“Not a thing. I didn’t want to push him.”
“He ever tell you where he came from?”
“Just China. That’s all. I asked Li Po, the girl from the travel agency, to talk to him, but he wouldn’t tell her much either.”
Tico didn’t know anything about the acupuncture clinic, since his salon was at the opposite end of the center. “Better tenants than the last ones,” he said, referring to the Church of Adam and Eve, an anti-gay group that had been closed down a year and a half before.
When we left the conference room, Li Po was waiting at my desk. She and Tico embraced, both of them crying a little. She was a Chinese woman in her mid-fifties, a little too plump for the bright blue silk dress she wore. Her black hair was piled up on her head, kept in place with a pair of chopsticks.
She and Tico chattered for a few minutes, and then he left. We led her back to the conference room, where she sat with a big sigh. She said that she was swamped with trying to retrace all her client activity, since her computer had been destroyed in the fire, and with it all her records.
“We’ll try not to keep you too long,” I said. “Can you tell us anything about the Chinese boy who was sleeping in Tico’s back room?”